Build It and They Will Come?

As a kid, a mate and I came up with the ingenious idea to turn my parent’s back garden into a carnival-like funfair.

Our vision was that our customers would have the time of their lives, after they had paid us a nominal entry fee, of course.

As wonderful sounding as this was in theory, at the time, my parents lived in a remote country area that had been drought stricken for years.

Our back garden looked more like an arid desert than a suitable site for fun and color, however, the challenge of transforming what was clearly an ugly and drab space into something magical did not deter us in the slightest.

Understandably, it took days of creative ‘think tanking’ and planning to come up with the perfect design and just as long to construct our ‘dream park’.

It didn’t look anything like you would expect of a carnival, but we did manage to be rather creative with string, a bag of clothes pegs, some random balls, a few bottles and whatever other odds and ends we were able to salvage around our neighborhood.

At last we finished our construction and so we arranged a grand opening, as all carnival owners would.

It would have been a lot grander if there had been more than just my mother and 5 year old baby sister as customers!

While we had put in a huge effort to create our version of a back garden dream carnival, we had completely forgotten to tell anybody else about it. Clearly our business venture was doomed.

Obviously there was no such thing as build it and they will come. Full marks for imagination and hard work but zero for marketing.

That night I relayed my story of woe to my Grandad who lived with us at the time. He said he had the perfect solution.

The BUSINESS Card Strategy

He pulled over a Rolodex of small cards on his desk, explaining how he had used these in his own business as a builder for many years.

He referred to the small mostly white cards as calling cards, explaining that when suppliers and sub contractors had visited him on site, he often didn’t have time to meet with them.

They would simply leave the card as an introduction to who they were, what service they offered and how they could be contacted. Whenever he wanted to call an existing supplier or find a new one, he would flip through the cards until he found the one he wanted.

You and I probably know these better as the modern day business card.

He suggested I create a card for our carnival. He would photocopy these at his office the next day after which we could go around the neighborhood and invite our friends to a second grand opening.

The idea was to leave them with a card so they had a reminder about all the necessary details. And so we did.

The second grand opening was definitely better than the first. We had at least ten more customers so we knew that my Grandad’s calling card idea worked.

Unfortunately few were as enthusiastic about our creation as we were but we all had a great afternoon eating cookies and playing games together nonetheless.

BUSINESS Cards Still Work

Back in the day when there was no Internet, business cards were used to great effect as a marketing tool.

Business sales reps and owners always kept a stack of these cards on them, which they handed out to all new prospects and just about anybody with whom they came into contact.

Although these are still used in the offline world, they are less popular with many people preferring to pass on their website URL or email address instead.

In my experience, business cards are still a wonderful way to leave a reminder with someone about what you do, how you can help them and how they can contact you.

As a blog owner I want to encourage you to leave your business card with others since it’s an effective way of letting others know about your site.

The strategy is simple; whenever you get a chance to leave your card with someone, do it.

The great thing about this strategy is that it works offline and online as I’ll explain.

Physical and Virtual BUSINESS Cards

You can have a physical business card designed and made up for very little cost these days. My favorite online design and print site is MOO. They are based in the UK and supply over 190 countries.

One of the advantages of using MOO is that they often offer free postage for new orders and you don’t have to order huge quantities either.

You can use one of their designs but I would recommend using your blog’s branding across all marketing campaigns.

Make sure you include your name, web address and how you can help them on the card.

While you can include physical contact details this is not essential as the purpose of the card is to promote your blog.

A virtual business card is not really a card at all, just your name and a link to your website. Left in the right places online this works just as well.

Physical cards can be given to people and left in various places for others to find. Virtual cards can be left as links at strategic sites online.

Where to Leave Your BUSINESS Cards

Physical Cards

Give these to anybody and everybody, especially friends and family who want to know what you’re doing online

When you go to business networking meetings, give your card to people with whom you chat. Meetup.com is a good site to find local networking meetings in your area

Virtual Cards

Leave comments on other blogs in your niche. Choose bigger and more authoritative blogs than yours. Make sure you read the post and leave a quality and relevant comment that adds value to the post. When you leave a comment you can usually leave your name and site URL. When others read your comments there is a good chance they will like what you have written and be curious about you and your site.

Answer questions in your niche on forums and sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. When you leave a comment you will be able to leave a link to your website, Make sure you add value and answer questions as best you can so that people start to look to you as an expert and want to visit your website.

Post your blog posts on social media platforms. When you do, you will leave your link there for others to follow.

Join online groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and participate in Twitter chats. Once again you will be able to leave your virtual footprint at these sites for others to follow.

Write guest posts for bigger and busier blogs than your own. When you do you’ll be able to leave a link on their sites for others to follow.

You can also see whether you can post your website link on sites like http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com

improve blog traffic card by card

You want more traffic so you can build your brand and influence. Handing out physical cards to others or leaving virtual business cards at targeted websites is a simple and ideal way to improve blog traffic.

Remember to identify who your optimal audience is and what they are struggling with. Then create content to address their struggles, before reaching out to them with a card to let them know how you can help them.

Got Questions? Something to say? Leave a comment. Let’s chat

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14 Comments

Love this article Mark and the roots of your back yard carnival, reminds me of my own and my son’s entrepreneurial escapades. When you say calling card is this the same as a business card? From your article it very much sounds like it. I always had the strategy of asking for someone else’s card if you thought you were able to help them and potentially they in future maybe able to help you. So a 2 way street to begin to get to know each other in business and help and support each other. Great article thanks for sharing!

Yes a calling and business card would be the same thing. I’ve always known a calling card to have a person’s name and address on it, usually sent or left in lieu of a formal social or business visit but now that you’ve raised this question I realise as well that for many, a calling card is a telephone calling card too so I might just clarify what I’m referring to in the post. 🙂

Yes that’s it. Just small business card with your logo an details which you can give to others. A good idea for you to have them made using the Thai language. It’s just another way of spreading the news about your website. It can be quite difficult to get your blog on the cool site of the day as it is very popular but then it depends on your site and timing and anybody can do it, so why not? . Good luck with that.

Thanks for coming back and reporting on the cool site of the day. I actually did not know it was a paid service so thanks for letting me know. Also it sounds like they may be targeting a certain kind of website from what you say. Leaving a comment and and your URL is good thinking though as it’s quite a mature website if I’m not mistaken so must be a Google ‘favorite’. 🙂

Yes I sure have used this to great effect. In fact what prompted me to write this post was the fact that I needed to order more cards.

I order mine online from MOO. You can order as few as 50 cards whch is great especially if you just want to try it out. I usually opt for 400 cards which costs about $50 which is 0.125 per card. The price depends on where you’re located.I have the logo, my name, what I do, email address and website URL on it. I would definitely do the same if I was you. I don’t add my address as it’s not necessary.

It works well especially if you have enough contact with people face to face but I give them to people whenever I can so I always carry a few in my pocket. It’s not a mass traffic strategy but it works well because usually you either know the person you give it to or you’ve had a conversation with them so they are more of a ‘warm’ contact.

These days few businesses can afford to operate exclusively offline or online and there’s no reason to anyway.

Business is all about people, connecting with people and helping them where we can. Business cards whether the physical card or virtual version can help us achieve this.

As much as the Internet is a great marketing tool, people live in the real world so if we are not connecting with people here about our online businesses we are missing a big alternative marketing opportunity.

Online business owners like bloggers and affiliate marketers sometimes forget that having a business card is practical way to spread the news about your business, person to person.

In fact it’s a very personal useful approach where your chances of someone following up are much better since usually you have had a face to face interaction with them so the connection is lot stronger.

It’s funny how something that happened so long ago is still able to teach me lessons all these years later. I guess it’s more about the principles than anything and even though a digital business is quite different, the idea behind attracting traffic to whatever we are doing is still the same and relevant.

Yes I do find the ‘Moo site’ very user friendly and forward thinking when it comes to design so hopefully you will find it useful too.

Wishing you all the very best with driving even more traffic to your website. 🙂